Re: Is this really unexpected?

Problem for me with this is it's aimed at allowing Microsoft to control the distribution channel.

I can buy a 6 months old game from Amazon/Play/Ebay for £15(second hand)-25(new) on XBoxLive I have to pay £40 for the privilege.

I happily own 60 games for the XBox and XBox 360 but if this is the way Microsoft want to play it then I will wait to see what SONY are offering and if they too try to fuckover their customers I will buy which ever is easiest to crack and give neither of them a penny more than that.

He may well be

The money laundering was thrown in to make the case meet it's "extradition" requirement. Even if he was money laundering that charge is against the individual not the company. If that's the only one they get him on I hope everyone with a mega account sues the US Gov for it's heavy handed approach to a legitimate business.

Oh and if that does happen don't expect MAFIAA, the RIA or your bent politicians to pay for the cost of fixing this mess, no sir. That will be covered but the public purse.

Why?

Why not have it so you can only donate to the party, that way no influence over individuals.

Keep the cap on the amount each person can contribute and also limit the amount that parties can spend on an election campaign. That way every other commercial for the next 9 months won't be about the election and neither party would be able to buy the Presidency.

The sooner America can sever the connection between self serving corporations and cash guzzling politicians the better.

At least....

SOPA and PIPA got debated by elected officials, our DEA is only alive because the system of law was abused so blatantly by a twice caught fraudster (Mandy). It got rushed into law in an completely undemocratic process called "the wash". This is a period of time when parliament is dissolved in the run up to a general election but somehow laws still get passed with no-one able to debate or challenge them.

SOPA and PIPA got debated by elected officials, our DEA is only alive because the system of law was abused so blatantly by a twice caught fraudster (Mandy). It got rushed into law in an completely undemocratic process called "the wash". This is a period of time when parliament is dissolved in the run up to a general election but somehow laws still get passed with no-one able to debate or challenge them.

Nice quote

I'm having that.... but wait! When did the person you're quoting die? If it was 1943 or after then this persons creative work my still be copyrighted (on death +70 years)... So by you quoting some dead dude you are effectively going to get El Reg removed from the internet.

That's SOPA at work right there. The copyright laws are already over the top for what is effectively as bad a crime as littering or Jaywalking.

Google did what it had to do....

... to get to market in time to still be in with a shout and worry consequences later. I'm not saying it's right but I think they understood that with zero OS experience they had to move quickly to join the party Apple started (and forgot to invite anyone else), Google could then get a foot hold before the OS giant came along and tried to crash the party. Microsoft had the luxury of being a big player in the OS market and so could take it's time, Google need a hell for leather approach to get where it is now. I'm not even sure they care about the how they got there and how much it's going to cost in short term patent suites as long as it can serve adds to 500 millions (I have on idea of the correct figure) android phone on it's terms.

Someone buy that man a drink

Copyright has evolved

beyond the idea of protecting artists and trying to ensure that they are compensated for the works they create, to protecting a cartel of record labels who have no idea how to survive in a digital age.

Nearly but not quite...

Patents serve their purpose very well in the US, and that purpose is to protect markets against outside companies. If you want to launch product like say a new smart phone: In the US you'll need to partner up with one of the Big Boys (like M$ or Google) to protect yourself against Apple, as HTC are finding out now. so your paying some US based company for their license pool the company gets paid and the government gets more taxes.

If the patent system was just a way for lawyers to get paid all the tech companies would be campaigning to omit software from patent laws, but as things stand it's more beneficial to protect themselves against innovative foreign startups than it is pay off the lawyers to sort it out.

Change will only come about when they realise that the backers behind the patent troll holding companies are from foreign investors screwing the system for their own non-American gains.

And the little matter of...

I think you maybe missing the point slightly...

Taking your shops stocking a magazine argument a little bit closer to the truth, would be:

A shop stocks a magazine and charges the publisher 40-70% for each magazine it sells. I buy the magazine and like it so much I decide I want a years subscription to it. Now I fill in a form in the magazine and send it to the publisher along with payment which is generally in the region of (price x 12) - 40% (that they don't have to pay the newsagent) and I get the magazine through my door once a month until the year is up and I pay the vastly reduced price again for a subscription.

What Apple are trying to do here is say that the form you fill in and send to the publisher should instead be sent to them for no apparent reason other than you bought it through them, which I might add is the only place to buy such things so I call it by it's proper name a "Monopoly". So it's quite clear to everyone that Apple are blatantly abusing their monopoly to demand publishers use a system that gives Apple a 30% cut for having sold you 1 magazine at some point.

Now publishers who want to sell through the app store will have to either absorb the 30%, possible but unlikely, or they'll pass it on at least in part to you and me the customer. Apple won't missing out on their cut, the Publisher can't miss out and reduce it's margins so I'm left paying extra for something Steve Jobs hand no hand in!

And there is the rub...

The patent system although getting out of hand with everyone suing everyone else it does allow American companies with a long patent history, the likes of Microsoft, Apple ect., to restrict or to licence (read 'Tax') any new comers to the market. So your TomTom and Asian companies can't come in and undercut everyone, because the price to license the patented tech in the US brings their prices up to the same level as those already established in the market.

The patent system is what it is. But big businesses need it because it would cost them far more not to have it.

I just sit here in the UK thankful we have a free market, at least until we try to sell our product in the States.

Does it matter?

Get a clue

The difference between Flash and Google search is they aren't a web standard, they aren't being put forward as being part of HTML 5, they aren't going to be used by every webmaster in a few years time because they're part of a standard only for MPEG-LA to come along and say "You know that standard your using for free? Yeah you know, the one we gave away for long enough so that everyone forgot about us? Yeah! that's the one. Well now you pay us for using it or we sue your arse"

Thankfully the stance Opera, Mozilla and Chrome are taking, might actually(hopefully?) kill off this madness of getting a patented non-royalty free technology adopted as part of an open standard.